San Diego  Nearly 16 years after discovering the body of their 12-year-old daughter in their Escondido home, the parents of Stephanie Crowe found themselves back on the witness stand Monday.

They answered questions about the morning of Jan. 21, 1998, after Stephanie had been attacked in her bedroom. And they described the chaos they lived through while calling 911, waiting for paramedics to arrive and being questioned by police.

“She was lying on the floor and she was really cold,” said Cheryl Crowe, adding that she lay on top of her daughter’s body that morning in a futile attempt to warm her up.

“I think the paramedics pulled me off of her,” said Crowe, who along with her husband, Steve, were the first witnesses to testify in the retrial of the man accused in the killing.

Richard Tuite, 44, faces a manslaughter charge in connection with Stephanie Crowe’s stabbing death. At the time, he was a transient who residents in the rural neighborhood saw on Jan. 20, 1998, the night Stephanie was attacked.

Cheryl Crowe testified that she heard noises in the house that night — the sound of a door opening and then closing, perhaps — after she had gone to bed. But she wasn’t sure whether the noises were real or part of a dream.

A recording of a 911 call was played in San Diego Superior Court. In it, the dispatcher urges Crowe to stay on the phone, telling her that paramedics were en route.

Crowe, who is audibly crying in the recording, can be heard saying she knows her daughter is already dead.

“My whole world was just flipped upside down, still is,” she said in court.

In 2004, a jury acquitted Tuite of murder but found him guilty of voluntary manslaughter. Judge Frederic Link sentenced the defendant to 13 years in prison, plus another four years for an escape from a courthouse holding area before the jury was selected in the last trial.

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Tuite’s conviction last year, leading the state Attorney General’s Office to retry the case.

Prosecutors said in opening statement last week that the killing was spurred by an “obsessive rage” that led Tuite into the Crowe’s home and into Stephanie’s bedroom.

But the defense contended that it was Stephanie’s brother, Michael, who felt rage toward his more popular younger sister.

Michael Crowe was charged along with two other teens based on statements two of them made while undergoing hours of police questioning. The charges were dropped after small amounts of Stephanie’s blood was found on clothing Tuite was wearing the night of the killing.

Last year, a San Diego judge concluded that Michael Crowe was innocent of killing his sister. Such findings are rare.

On Monday, Cheryl and Steve Crowe answered questions in court about their son, confirming that he had worn a lot of black clothing as a 14-year-old high school freshman in 1998, spent a lot of time in his room playing video games and had let his grades slip.

Steve Crowe said he wasn’t disturbed by the dark clothing, but at one point he suggested that his son wear something “with a little more color.”